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Britain wants Pakistan, Russia to accept hostages

LONDON: Britain has asked Russia and Pakistan if they will take in 125 Afghani hijack-hostage asylum seekers it wants to deport, the Home Office said late on Saturday.

A Home Office (Interior Ministry) spokesman said just 17 of the 142 freed hostages - who have been moved to an immigration holding centre in Gloucestershire in western England - had said they wanted to return home to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

"The government has contacted some other governments with a view to whether they would accept these people, including countries with large Afghan communities," the spokesman told Reuters.

"We have made contacts with Pakistan and Russia but so far there has been no decision from them," he added. "Only 17 of the freed hostages want to go home."

The government has denied passengers are being pressured not to claim asylum, but Home Secretary (interior minister) Jack Straw has said he wants to see those who had been on board the Afghan plane removed from the country "as soon as practicably possible".

The Home Office spokesman said that the Afghans would be able to appeal any decision to deport them against their will, adding however that the plane chartered to take home those who wanted to return would not leave before Sunday afternoon.

HOSTAGES IN IMMIGRATION'S HANDS

The hostages were driven late on Saturday in a coach convoy from Stansted airport near London to an immigration holding centre in Moreton-in-the-Marsh where immigration officials will decide their fate.

Human rights activists have urged Straw not to deport those wanting to stay in Britain after their gruelling ordeal and escape returning to miserable living conditions under the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban.

Twenty-two people arrested after the hijack ended peacefully on Thursday are still being questioned by police and are expected to appear in court early next week to be charged under Britain's Prevention of Terrorism Act.

One of the plane's pilots told a news conference on Saturday the hijackers, who took control of the Ariana airliner on a domestic flight, had threatened to kill their hostages and blow the plane up when it landed in Britain.

He defended the four-man crew's escaped from the Boeing 727 through a cockpit window, saying they beleived the passengers would be safer if the plane was stranded on the runway without a pilot.

"If we escaped, the hijackers would be stranded and would not decide to harm the passengers," pilot Said Nabi, who along with his crew were accused of abandoning their passengers, said.

British Sunday newspapers meanwhile claimed that following the escape, elite SAS special forces troops "came within seconds" of storming the jet when the hijackers discovered the crew's escape and angrily pushed a fifth crew member out of the door of the aircraft.-Reuters